Criminal Law Library BlogTITLE: The Fear Within
SUBTITLE: Spies, Commies, and American Democracy on Trial AUTHOR: Scott Martelle PUBLICATION DATE: May 2011
PUBLISHER: Rutgers University Press PAGE COUNT: 320 pp.
Articles Posted in Criminal Law and Justice
Gangs in a New Jersey County
The following is a link to a a listing of towns in Union County New Jersey and the number of gangs reported to be established in each town, even many of the smaller ones. One reason for publishing this post is that we suspect this particular article may point to a very small representation of a much larger problem throughout the nation that should concern us all.
David Badertsher
Book Review: Cross Examination Handbook: Persuasion, Strategies, and Techniques
We are pleased to presnet the following review of Cross Examination Handbook: Persuasion, Strategies and Techniques by Ronald H. Clark and others as acknowledged below. The review was prepared by our Senior Law Librarian for Public Access, Theodore Pollack
Title: Cross-Examination Handbook: Persuasion, Strategies, and Techniques
Author: Ronald H. Clark, George R. Dekle, Sr., William S. Bailey
New BJS Study: U.S. Prison – Probation – Parole Population Drops in 2009
A recently released U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics Study presents data on the number of adults under some form of correctional supervision at the end of the year 2009. The Report discussing the Study was released on December 21, 2010; it is part of the Correctional Population of the United States Series, published annually. For more information see the Bureau of Justice Statistics Press Release accompanying the Report For additional information including links to accompanying spread sheet data click here.
Library Announcement: Online Access to Temporary Comission on Revision of New York Penal Law and Criminal Code (1961-1970) Papers Held by Library
David Badertscher
The New York Supreme Court Criminal Term Library (New York County) is pleased to announce a major enhancement regarding access to those Temporary Commission on Revision of New York Penal Law and Criminal Code (1961-1970) papers held by the New York Supreme Court Criminal Term Library (New York County). During the past year we in the library have been working with professional interns, archivists, and especially Philip Yow and his web design team at the State of New York Unified Court System to find ways to preserving these materials, many of which were beginning to deteriorate significantly. After confronting various obstacles, technical and otherwise, we settled on digitizing the material as a number of separate and searchable pdf files and then placing all of them on the library website with an overlay of google searchability. Although this may not be perfect it does make the documents accessible on the web in a cost effective manner.
A word of further explanation. these papers primarily consisting of documents submitted to and documents produced by the Temporary Commission on Revision of Penal Laws and Criminal Code (1961-1970) were collected by our former Administrative Judge Peter Mcquillan who served on the staff of the Commission. Justice Mcquillan left the Papers in my custody when he retired and we first put up an index to the papers on the web and now the full text of these materials. In addition we have included The Proposed New York Criminal Procedure Law of 1969 because in addition to the text of the proposed law, it includes valuable additional materials related to the work of the Commission and derivation tables for use in comparing the current Code with the earlier Code. Special permission was obtained from Thomson Reuters before publishing the latter segment.
Two Book Reviews – One Author – Ron Arons
Until a few weeks ago before receiving a telephone call I had never heard of Ron Arons. During that call Mr. Arons explained that he had been following postings on this blog and wondered if I would be interested in reviewing two of his books. After some discussion I agreed to either review them myself or ask some of my colleagues to review them for posting on the Criminal Law Library blog, with the understanding that the books provided for reviewing would be added to the library collection of the New York Supreme Court Criminal Term Library of New York County and not given to me personally.
We are fortunate that two colleagues, both experienced book reviewers, were available and eager to take on these assignments. Pepper Hedden who has worked with me on special projects and reviews materials regularly for the Law Library Association of Greater New York (LLAGNY) will graduate December 2010 from St. John’s University with an MLS degree. She is a reference librarian in the law library of the New York County District Attorney’s office and is reviewing The Jews of Sing Sing the first of Mr. Arons’ books listed below. Ted Pollack who is reviewing Wanted! U.S. Criminal Records: Sources & Research Methodology, also by Mr. Arons, is the Senior Law Librarian at the New York County Public Access Law Library. Ted continues to review legal materials for both the New York Law Journal and the Library Journal.
Since I am not writing any of the reviews below I will only say that as a law librarian who is always looking for useful sources of criminal records, I have already found Mr. Arons book Wanted! U.S. Criminal Records: Sources & Research Methodology useful in identifying criminal records in other jurisdictions. Unfortunately I have not yet found time to read The Jews of Sing Sing–but I will. Now on to the book reviews:
Findlaw Case Summaries: Criminal Law and Procedure 43
To view the full-text of cases you must sign in to FindLaw.com. All summaries are produced by Findlaw
November 8-12 2010.
United States Fourth Circuit, 11/12/2010
US v. Ide, No. 09-4833
District court’s grant of government’s petition to revoke defendant’s term of supervised release originally imposed in May 2002 as part of his sentence on a federal charge, claiming that defendant’s commission of an additional state offense, along with his failure to file monthly reports, violated the conditions of his supervised release, is affirmed as, under the circumstances, a defendant’s supervised release term is tolled under 18 U.S.C. section 3624(e) during the period that he spent in pretrial detention awaiting trial on the state charge for which he later was convicted. ..
United States Fifth Circuit, 11/09/2010
US v. Jackson, No. 09-10850
Defendant’s conviction and sentence, following a jury trial, for conspiring to possess with intent to distribute more than five kilograms of cocaine, are vacated where certain notebooks introduced into evidence were not sufficiently authenticated, the error violated defendant’s rights under the Confrontation Clause, and the error was not harmless.
United States Fifth Circuit, 11/09/2010
US v. Flores-Gallo, No. 09-40882
Defendant’s sentence for unlawful reentry into the U.S. is affirmed where the district court properly found that defendant’s prior Kansas aggravated battery offense was a “crime of violence” for sentencing purposes and imposed an enhancement accordingly.
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Crime Related Story Ideas*
October 20, 2010
October 20, 2010 Computer Expert Pleads Guilty to Hacker Stock Scheme (Bloomberg)
Social Media are Affecting the Way We Hear About Death: Police Grapple With Issue
On social media bad news spreads quickly.
When off-duty Baltimore Police Detective Brian Stevenson was killed Saturday night after being struck in the head by a piece of concrete, word spread quickly through police circles and spilled onto Facebook, where the officer’s young daughter learned of his death before relatives could break it to her in person.
See complete article by Justin Fenton in the October 20, Baltimore Sun.